President López Obrador presented a federal government poll on Wednesday showing that 71% of respondents want him to continue in the nation’s top job until the end of his six-year term in 2024.

The poll – which the president referred to in a speech Tuesday to mark his second anniversary in office – was conducted by the Ministry of the Interior over the telephone with 2,500 people, López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference.

“Yesterday I announced that we did a poll last weekend and [in response] to the question asking if you want me to continue or to quit we have 71% [of respondents] in favor of me continuing,” he said. “I think that about 25% are against [me continuing as president] and 4% didn’t say.”

López Obrador, best known as AMLO, intends to hold a “revocation of mandate” referendum in early 2022 and has vowed to step down if a majority of citizens vote in favor of him leaving office. The president suggested that was unlikely to happen, although two recent newspaper polls found that his support is closer to 60% than 70%.

“I always have other information and we know what is happening,” said López Obrador, who has a tendency to label polls and media reports he doesn’t agree with as biased.

“It was a telephone poll, it couldn’t be done face to face; maybe if it was done directly we’d do better,” he said, explaining that only 20% of people in Chiapas – where the president is popular – have landlines.

The government poll also found that 60% of respondents believe that López Obrador is a better president than his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, while 17.5% think he is worse.

However, not all of the poll’s findings were flattering for AMLO. Almost half of the respondents – 47.2% – said that their economic situation has worsened under the current government and only 12.8% said they were better off. About four in 10 respondents said their financial situation hadn’t changed.

López Obrador also revealed that the poll respondents gave him an average score of 6.6 out of 10 for his performance as president. While hardly a ringing endorsement, the president said that his grade was higher than that of Peña Nieto, whose government was plagued by corruption scandals.

AMLO said he will present the government’s own polling results from time to time, saying: “As there is freedom of course anyone can do a poll – we’ll announce our [results] periodically.”

It remains to be seen whether he will have additional information to counter the “other information” should the future results not be to his liking.

Source: El Universal (sp)